Re: Current state of the Linux kernel on SPARC

I was actually part of the Oracle team that helped port Oracle Linux 6 
(OL6) to sparc64 (for T5120, T5140, T3, T4, T5).  OL6 also supported 
creating/managing ldoms as well, much like Solaris. Although I don't 
currently work for Oracle, I still have an interest in helping with 
various architectures (including sparc64, power be/le, arm64, x86, 
etc).  I would definitely enjoy working on this again in a full-time 
capacity, if given an opportunity to do so.

Regarding sparc64, I have T5120, T5140, and Oracle S7-2 systems.  Last 
time I checked, many months ago Gentoo and Debian both worked on Oracle 
S7-2.

Regarding Gentoo:

During the initial bare-metal install on S7-2, it worked but couldn't 
use my ConnectX4-LX NIC.  I was blocked from continuing the install.  
Asked the Gentoo sparc team to enable support for ConnectX-4 LX and 
ConnextX-5 based Network Cards.  They also updated their ISO images to 
reflect it.  I confirmed it worked.

Regarding Debian:

It worked on S7-2, but can't say it was 100% stable (especially after 
updating packages). The initial bare-metal install was okay, but not 
very stable after updates (panics, etc).   When I have time, I will try 
the latest debian ports ISO to see if things are better 
(stability/update wise) on sparc64 (for S7-2 and T5140) and IBM Power7/8.

PS - Managed to get XRDP to build/install on Solaris 11.4 for remote 
desktop.   Also, just a heads-up, Solaris 11.4 (CBE 11.4.81) doesn't 
install bare-metal on Oracle S7-2.  It is a bug, hopefully the next CBE 
release will resolve that issue. 
  https://www.oracle.com/solaris/solaris11/downloads/solaris-downloads.html 
   Was planning to use CBE 11.4.81 to create ldoms, I had to use an 
earlier version of Solaris 11.4 ISO to work around the bare-metal 
installation problem.


Regards,

Tony Rodriguez


On 8/26/25 10:49 AM, Dennis Clarke wrote:
> On 8/24/25 17:09, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> since there has been a lot of recent activity around the Linux kernel 
>> on SPARC
>> and there are also a lot of issues to be dealt with and unmerged 
>> patches, I have
>> decided to summarize the current state of the Linux kernel on SPARC 
>> to bring
>> anyone interested up to date.
>>
>
>
>     Thank you very much for this detailed update. I have had a SPARC
> server ( or two or seven ) running somewhere but the problems are, how
> may I say it? The problems are always numerous. It is just a real pain
> to keep one of those running much of anything anymore. Your detailed
> update gives me the notion that a decently fast machine may exist that
> will run Linux in a reasonable fashion. Maybe. This could just be yet
> another total waste of time and money. That is the nature of Linux on
> SPARC these days.
>
>     Having said all of that I wonder if anyone has run Linux on the more
> recently built ORACLE S7-2 type servers? I think the people at Oracle
> may have released a variant of ORACLE Linux ( read that as Red Hat ) for
> SPARC just for this machine. However the code changes required for that
> to work may be locked away on Larry's island. Who knows.
>
>     So has anyone managed to get Linux running on the S7-2 type unit?
>
>